The Westmere Legacy

Chapter Two

Sylvester answered Bella’s knock on the door of the Earl’s apartments. ‘Please, tell his lordship Mr Trenchard, the Comte de Courville and Sir Edward have arrived, but he does not think Captain Huntley will have received his invitation in time to obey.’ She paused. ‘And warn him the Comtesse is here, too.’

‘Oh, is she?’ came a bellow from an inner room. ‘Well, I shall give her a right about, poking her nose in where it’s not wanted.’ He appeared at the door, dressed in a mulberry velvet jacket and matching breeches and clutching a walking stick. ‘Take my arm, girl. Let’s see what those young bloods are made of.’

‘Do you need me?’ she asked timidly. ‘Could I not wait in my room?’

‘No, you could not. Want to see their faces…’

‘But I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

To which there was no answer, and they made their slow and stately way down to the withdrawing room. Before entering, the Earl stood in the doorway and surveyed the company gathered there. Edward bowed slightly, James gave a curt nod and Louis flung out his arm in an extravagant gesture and bowed low. ‘Your servant, my lord.’

The Earl grunted and, leaning heavily on Bella’s arm, made his way over to a high-backed armchair and lowered himself into it. Then he turned to the Comtesse. ‘What are you doing here? I do not recollect asking you to come.’

She dipped a curtsey. ‘An oversight, I am sure, Uncle. How do you do?’

‘Well enough. Not about to shuffle off, at any rate.’

‘I should hope not!’ she said with false brightness. ‘But if you are about to settle your affairs, then I must tell you it is not before time.’

‘What has it to do with you, madam?’

‘Louis is your heir.’

‘Is he? We shall see.’

‘What do you mean by that? My goodness, if you mean to try and disinherit him, it is as well I decided to come, too.’

‘You take too much upon yourself, madam. I wish you to leave us. Find something to amuse you while I talk to these reprobates.’

Elizabeth looked as though she were about to throw a fit, but then, realising he would not proceed while she stayed, flung her head up in disgust and sailed from the room. Bella, who was standing beside her grandfather’s chair, bent and whispered, ‘Should I go, too, Grandfather? She is truly upset and I could keep her company.’

‘No, you will stay here. Sit on that stool.’ He indicated a stool at his feet, then looked up at the three young men. ‘Sit down, you will give me a crick in the neck from peering up at you.’ And as they obeyed he added, ‘Edward, where is that cork-brained brother of yours?’

‘He was in Town when your letters arrived, my lord. I forwarded his, but he may not have received it in time to make arrangements to be here.’

‘More likely demonstrating his independence.’ He gave a grunt of amusement. ‘And he the least independent of the lot of you.’

‘He may yet come,’ Bella ventured, wondering where Robert was. She would not put it past him to keep them waiting on purpose, doing as her grandfather had suggested and asserting his independence. Or proving to her he would not be coerced by anything she had said. She wouldn’t put it beyond him to invite those argumentative labourers to join him in a glass of something at one of the many inns in Ely. ‘We could wait a little longer.’

‘I am not in the habit of waiting on ill-mannered jack-at-warts.’

‘My lord,’ Edward protested. ‘There is nothing wrong with my brother’s manners.’

‘Well, we shall proceed without him.’ He paused to look round at them, smiling slightly. ‘What a gaggle of fine geese you are, to be sure. But you are all I have, bar Bella. You don’t deserve her, not any of you, and if I had any choice I would not let her within a mile of you.’ He sighed heavily. ‘But my mind’s made up. One of you shall have her.’

Bella, who had been sitting looking at her feet, risked a glance at them. She was confronted by three open mouths, though no sound issued from any of them. They had obviously been struck dumb.

‘Well?’ the old man said. ‘Haven’t you anything to say for yourselves?’

‘What would you have us say?’ Edward was the first to recover. ‘Miss Huntley is a dear child. I am very fond of her but—’

‘That, at least, is a start. But are you so blind that you cannot see what is before your eyes? She is no longer a child. While you have been sowing your wild oats, she has become a marriageable woman.’

Edward turned to Bella, smiling to soften what appeared to be a rejection of her. ‘I beg your pardon, Bella, I meant no offence. You are beautiful and a man would have to be blind not to see that, but—’

‘But you do not like being coerced,’ she put in quickly, so that he might know it was not her idea. ‘And neither do I. Please, do not consider it.’

‘Then what is the point of this meeting?’

‘I’ll tell you, shall I?’ the old man said. ‘Isabella cannot have the management of a fortune, though I have no doubt she would make a better job of it than you, Louis.’ He looked at the young man’s extravagant clothes. ‘Your tailor’s bill alone would bankrupt the estate. I could appoint trustees until she married but I ain’t keen on the idea. I want to see her married before I hand in my accounts.’

‘Very laudable,’ Louis said. ‘But I shall choose my own wife.’

‘Indeed, I hope you may,’ Bella said, very near to tears, not at being rejected but at the humiliation of it all.

‘Bella, please, do not cry,’ Edward said. ‘There is plenty of time for you to make a good match whatever the old greybeard says.’

‘And I could rule you out for such impertinence.’

‘I have already ruled myself out, sir, but you forget my brother is not here to speak for himself.’

‘Who is to blame for that? I have told Bella she shall have her choice, but if she is sighing after that ne’er-do-well, she must find a way of bringing him to the mark.’

‘Grandpapa, I am not sighing after him. I am not sighing after anyone and I wish you would not speak of me as if I were not in the room. I might as well go and bear the Comtesse company.’ It was unlike her to be so bold but she was being driven beyond endurance.

‘Then it must be one of the others,’ he said, ignoring her.

‘I am your heir,’ Louis said. ‘But that does not mean you may dictate…’

The old man smiled. ‘You are sure of that, are you?’

‘No, of course he is not,’ Edward said. ‘The estate is entailed and must be handed down through the male line. And that means through Papa.’

‘Is that so?’ The old man seemed to be enjoying teasing them, although his tone was crotchety, as if he would quickly lose patience with them. ‘You are very quick to lay your claim, but I have not heard you offer for Isabella.’

James, who had been listening to this exchange with a bemused look on his face, suddenly came to life and looked from Bella to the Earl. ‘Are you saying that whoever marries Bella will inherit?’

‘Yes, but he must make a push. I said there was no time to lose and I meant it.’

‘You do not mean to say you have broken the entail?’ Edward said, shocked to the core. ‘You can’t have done. The only people to gain by such a procedure are the lawyers. You’d be left without a feather to fly with.’

‘And you are grasping at straws,’ his lordship said.

‘I don’t believe it,’ Louis said. ‘The old man is trying to gammon one of us into marrying the chit.’

‘I spoke first,’ James put in. ‘Miss Huntley, may I crave a moment alone with you?’

Everyone turned to look at the overweight farmer in his filthy clothes. He was not in the habit of making decisions in a hurry, but he knew that to be first in with his offer would be a distinct advantage.

‘Oh, Bella,’ Edward said, as Bella looked from one to the other, dismay written all over her face. ‘You do not have to accept him, whatever his lordship says.’

Louis, who had been silently watching her through his quizzing glass for some time, let it drop to dangle on its ribbon from his wrist and turned to James. ‘You do not, for a minute, suppose Miss Huntley will receive you looking like that,’ he said. ‘Or smelling like you do. Go home and bath and change.’

‘While you insert yourself in my place.’

Louis laughed in a high-pitched, effeminate way. ‘Lah, that is the last thing I would do. Insert myself anywhere you had been, I mean.’ He fetched a lace handkerchief from his pocket and waved it before his nose. ‘My lord, pray send him on his way.’

‘Bella?’ The Earl appealed to her. ‘Do you want me to send him away?’

Before she could answer, they heard a commotion in the hall and Jolliffe’s voice protesting loudly and another, even angrier, saying, ‘I am come to speak to Mr Trenchard and speak to him I will.’

‘Go and see what is happening,’ the Earl instructed Bella. ‘Tell Jolliffe to send whoever it is on his way. I will not have brawls in my house.’

Bella, thankful for the interruption, hurried to obey. A man of middling years in the working clothes of a labourer was standing in the hall, wringing his cap in his hands.

‘What is it, Jolliffe?’

‘He wants to speak to Mr Trenchard,’ the butler said in aggrieved tones. ‘I told him you were all about to go in to dinner…’

‘And lucky you are to have a dinner to go to,’ the man said, stung to anger. ‘You don’t think I wanted to come here, do you? It won’t serve me well when they hear of it.’

‘Who?’ asked Bella.

‘The Eastmere men, miss. They’re all over the place. They said they’d pull the barn down and wreck the house if Mr Trenchard don’t come and give them money.’

James had followed Bella into the hall. ‘What is it, man? Can I not leave you five minutes but you must come running after me?’

‘Mr Trenchard, sir, the men are rioting and they came to the farm. They want money. Fifty pounds they said on account of low wages and the price of bread.’

‘I wish I had fifty pounds to give them,’ James said morosely. ‘Tell them to go to the parish overseer—he is the one they should be applying to.’ Since the parish had adopted the Speenhamland system, the shortfall on wages had been paid by the poor rates, a far from ideal situation which meant that the farmers had no incentive to pay a realistic wage and their men were forced to go cap in hand to charity. They salvaged their pride by calling it an allowance which they should have as of right.

‘Sir, you must come, or they will burn the house down.’

‘Faith and Constance?’ he queried in alarm. ‘Where are they? Are they safe?’

‘Mrs Clarke is looking after them but she is afraid for her life…’

‘James, you must go at once,’ Bella said, appalled. Was this what the meeting in Ely had been about? The mob must have stopped talking in favour of action. But why pick on James? Where was Robert? Did he know about it? ‘I am sure the Earl will excuse you.’

‘Yes, I must.’ Then to his foreman, ‘I’ll ride on. Follow as fast as you can, I might need you.’ He was halfway to the door when he stopped and turned back to Bella. ‘Miss Huntley, I beg leave to return to settle the matter we were discussing.’

She nodded without answering, wondering if she could have done anything to stop the trouble with the labourers. Perhaps she should have warned James about them, but her mind had been too full of the coming meeting with her cousins to connect a crowd of men in Ely with her cousin and his farm. She returned to the drawing room to acquaint the Earl with what had happened. He seemed not to be concerned for James’s safety. To him it was inconceivable that a handful of unruly labourers could not be controlled.

‘Can’t think what the justices are playing at,’ he said. ‘I knew this would happen when they gave in to the mob in Suffolk last year. Now they are all at it. They should send for the militia to round them up—a spell in prison would soon bring them to a proper sense of their place.’

‘Grandfather, they are starving and driven beyond endurance,’ Bella said.

‘What is that to the point? A few discontented labourers will not make me change my mind.’ The Earl was more concerned with his own little drama than the greater one being played out in the villages and fields of East Anglia. ‘And you would do well to consider your own position. You can assume you have had one offer, at least.’

James, she knew, was desperately pinched in the pocket in spite of his grandfather’s small annuity, and if the mob destroyed his barn, it might well ruin him. She felt sorry for him, but she could not marry him. She could not. ‘My lord, please, do not make me take James.’

‘I am not going to make you, child. I should be unhappy if you had been too quick to say yes. He is not the only one.’

She was mystified. He knew whom he wanted to offer for her and yet he would not say. She looked at the other two men. Edward looked furious and Louis was smiling mockingly. What were they thinking?

Before anyone could give utterance to their thoughts, Jolliffe appeared again. ‘My Lord, Cook asks if you wish to keep dinner back.’

‘Oh, no,’ Bella said. ‘It will spoil if we do. Grandpapa, please, let us postpone this discussion.’

‘Very well. We cannot continue until James returns. Tell Cook we are going to the dining room now. And send Sylvester to tell the Comtesse.’ He allowed Edward to help him to his feet and then escorted Bella out of the room, across the vast hall to the formal dining room. It was a very big room and struck them as cold as they entered it. Bella shivered. She had wanted to dine in one of the smaller rooms, but her grandfather had overruled her. ‘I am going to show those upstarts how an earl entertains,’ he had said. ‘One of them will have to become used to it.’

The Comtesse joined them as they seated themselves at the long refectory table, with the Earl at its head and Bella at the opposite end. Elizabeth took her place on his lordship’s left. ‘This place is as cold as a tomb,’ she said, looking at the dismal fire. ‘And just about as cheerful.’

‘I am sorry, my lady,’ Bella said. ‘We do not often use this room and it is the first fire we have lit in here this year. I fear the chimney needs sweeping. I will see to it first thing tomorrow.’

‘Uncle, you need a proper housekeeper,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Isabella is far too young for such a responsibility.’

‘I think Bella does very well,’ Edward said. ‘I do not doubt that his lordship allowed her no time to prepare for such an unexpected influx of visitors.’

‘That would account for the state of my room,’ Elizabeth said, watching as Daisy, in a new dress and apron and shaking with nerves, brought in the first course with the help of a temporary footman from the village. ‘It is thick with dust and the fire is so feeble it is no better than a peasant’s.’

Bella did not think the Comtesse had any idea of what a peasant’s fire was like, or that the poor man would not think of lighting one in a bedroom.

‘Your own fault,’ the Earl put in. ‘We do not keep rooms ready against unexpected guests. It would be a criminal waste in these hard times. I suggest you change apartments with your son, whose rooms were prepared.’

‘Of course, Mama,’ Louis said, anxious not to quarrel with his great uncle. ‘I’ll have my things moved out as soon as we have finished our meal.’

Slightly mollified, Elizabeth turned to Bella. ‘Where is Miss Battersby? I would have expected her to have come forward to make me welcome if you were too busy, attending to everyone else’s needs.’

‘She is visiting her sick sister in Downham Market. I expect her back at any time,’ Bella explained.

Elizabeth was shocked. ‘My lord, surely you are not keeping a young unmarried girl here without companion or chaperone? There will be the most prodigious scandal if it gets abroad.’

‘Fustian!’ he said. ‘I am her grandfather and this is her home. Always will be…’

‘As to that, I am sure Louis is not such a pinchpenny as to deny her a home when he comes into his own, but it will hardly be proper for her to stay here while he is unmarried.’

‘You presume too much, madam,’ the Earl said, favouring her with a glacial look.

‘Oh, Mama,’ Louis put in. ‘His lordship is determined on Miss Huntley bringing forth an heir before he dies.’

‘What is that to the point?’

The Earl sighed. ‘Tell her, Louis.’

‘His lordship is determined on marrying her to one of us,’ Louis told his mother, his usually pale complexion suffused with colour. ‘It is to be a condition of inheriting.’

‘You mean he is trying to force you to marry Isabella?’ She looked at the girl as she spoke and her expression told clearly what she thought of that idea.

‘Or Edward. Or James. Or Robert,’ he said morosely. ‘Her child will take precedence.’

‘He can’t do it,’ she said. ‘She is a female and the estate is entailed.’

‘Would you like to put it to the test?’ his lordship said.

‘I own Edward might think he had a claim,’ Elizabeth conceded, ‘though he would be in error, but the other two…’ It was past belief and her voice rose as she appealed to her uncle. ‘I cannot conceive that you would ever consider them. One is a clodhopper and the other a scapegrace.’

‘I said Bella may have her choice and I shall hold to that,’ he said. ‘James has already indicated his intention to offer for her.’

‘You will never let her go to the muckraker? My goodness, you must be touched in the attic even to think it. James Trenchard in this house!’ She laughed loudly, though her laughter was a little forced. ‘Can you imagine it? He would keep pigs in the drawing room and chickens in the hall. I should hope Isabella has more sense than to consider such an offer. And as for you, Edward, you are already engaged to Miss Charlotte Mellish.’

‘Not precisely,’ he said laconically.

‘How so, not precisely? Either you are or you are not, and I have it on good authority it wants but the announcement in The Gazette. You will be the worst kind of rakeshame if you renege on it and deserve to be cut dead.’

‘For your information, ma’am, I have not yet made a formal offer and may be rejected.’

‘Oh, so you mean to make yourself so disagreeable to Miss Mellish that she will have no hesitation but to end the affair. Very clever.’ She turned to Bella. ‘You would be making a fatal mistake if you were to take him on those terms, my dear…’

‘I have not said I will have any of them,’ Bella said in an anguished voice. ‘I cannot think that all this quarrelling and argument can result in happiness for any of us. Grandfather, please, tell everyone you have been hoaxing them.’

‘I shall tell them no such thing.’ He turned to the footman who had brought in the second remove and signalled him to serve it. ‘Now let us finish our meal in peace.’

The Comtesse opened her mouth to speak again but changed her mind and began eating her fish course with studied concentration. Bella knew she would have more to say as soon as the meal was over and she dreaded it.

She looked up and saw Edward smiling at her. She was not sure whether he was laughing at her or sympathising with her. Did he really mean to turn his back on Miss Mellish and make her an offer for the sake of the inheritance? What would it be like, being married to him under those conditions, knowing she was second best? It would hardly be propitious for a happy marriage. And would he be faithful to her? How long before he neglected her and sought the arms of Charlotte?

The interminable meal dragged on, as course after course was placed before them, picked at and taken away. The ladies remained silent, but Louis became increasingly foxed on his lordship’s wine and even Edward seemed to have lost some of his haughtiness by the time they reached the fruit course. They seemed to have forgotten, or were ignoring, the reason they were there and spoke of every subject under the sun except the one uppermost in their thoughts. It was like a cat and mouse game. Bella was counting the minutes to her escape when Jolliffe came to tell his lordship that Captain Huntley had arrived.

‘Then he may go hungry,’ his lordship said. ‘We have nearly finished. Put him in the drawing room to wait for us there.’

‘My lord, he is…’ Jolliffe paused. ‘He is somewhat dishevelled. I believe he has met with an accident.’

Bella gasped and even Elizabeth looked startled. Edward put down his cutlery and rose. ‘Is he hurt? Where is he?’

Robert himself appeared in the doorway behind Jolliffe. His beautiful cloth coat was torn and muddied, his cravat askew and he had lost his hat. What was worse, he had a bad cut over one eye which was encrusted with dried blood and a great purple bruise below it. He bowed to Elizabeth at the same time as he managed a quirky smile for Bella, who would have rushed forward to help him if the look he gave her had not halted her in her tracks. It warned her to be silent and not invite her grandfather’s close questioning. ‘A thousand apologies, ladies. I will take my leave until I am more presentable. Excuse me, my lord.’ To Edward he said, ‘Help me to my room, Teddy. Need a bath.’ He limped out of the room on the arm of his brother.

‘Well!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Been brawling like a prize-fighter and dares to show his face in the dining room. What is the world coming to? No manners any more, no respect. Is it any wonder the lower classes defy their betters when they have no good example to live by.’

‘I am sure Robert has not been brawling,’ Bella said, wondering just what had happened. ‘No doubt he will enlighten us when he is feeling more the thing.’

‘Then let us retire to the drawing room, you and I,’ the Comtesse went on. ‘We shall have a comfortable coze, while his lordship and Louis talk business.’ And with that she took Bella’s arm in a very firm grip, curtsied to the Earl without relaxing it and almost dragged the girl to the drawing room.

‘Now,’ she said when they were seated and the teatray had been brought in, ‘tell me what has brought on this curious humour in my uncle. Have you noticed him behaving strangely lately? Not quite himself, eh?’

‘He has been perfectly at ease with himself, except for his gout. It troubles him a great deal but he will not take the doctor’s advice and refrain from drinking. He says gout has nothing to do with the claret and burgundy he consumes, but is caused by the wet weather we have been having. And he may be right. It has been the wettest spring anyone can remember and many of the fields are inundated, which does not make the labourers’ plight any easier. Farmers like James are in sad straits themselves and cannot pay their men who have to apply to the parish…’

‘Are you being purposely obtuse, Isabella? I care not a fig for the farmers, so long as they pay their rents on time. I am talking about this insane notion to marry you off for a legacy. I do believe old Hanson has put the old man up to it.’

Mr George Hanson was the Earl’s legal man. ‘Why should he do that?’

‘To try and disinherit Louis. He has never looked on my son with any favour. He sees him as a Frenchman and therefore to be viewed with suspicion, which is very hard on my poor boy who has spent almost his entire life in England and renounced his lands in France.’

‘Renounced them?’ Bella queried, dragging her mind from what was happening upstairs to pay attention. ‘I thought they had been taken from him by the Revolutionaries.’

‘They were, but there are moves afoot to restore them. They will be ruined and worthless by now, of course, and I do not wish to go back.’ She shuddered. ‘And if we are not careful the contagion will spread and we shall have revolution here, on our doorstep.’

‘Oh, no, surely not?’

‘I saw evidence on our journey here—ricks burned, barns pulled down and posters pinned to empty shops. “Bread or blood,” they say. It is how it started in France. We need steadfast people like Louis at the helm to prevent it. That is why it is so important his legacy should not be put up to auction.’

Bella would not have described Louis as steadfast, but she let that go. She smiled crookedly. ‘Is the notion of your son being married to me so distasteful, my lady?’